


Being a widow means more than just wearing black

by merle_p



Series: Being a Widow [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Could possibly be considered a fix-it, F/M, Past Underage, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 12:47:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To be fair: Natasha has never actually killed anyone she has had sex with. That doesn't mean that everyone she's slept with is still alive, but that is a different story for another day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being a widow means more than just wearing black

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: for Avengers, Iron Man II, Thor, Captain America

The junior SHIELD agents think she is dating Clint Barton.

The senior agents know her well enough to laugh at the idea of her _dating_ , and assume that she and Barton are friends with benefits – benefits that include him tying her to the bed, or her pegging him with a strap-on, depending on whether you ask Hill or Sitwell.

Most people outside of SHIELD she crosses paths with, on the other hand, cannot imagine that she and Barton are fucking at all, mostly on account of the fact that Barton is still very much alive, and someone has yet to refute the rumor that she kills every man she sleeps with in the throes of passion.

She doesn't do anything to set them straight.

 

 

"Rоспожа Рома́нова," the agent says, and while his voice is devoid of anything resembling emotion, she can appreciate his effort to pronounce her name correctly. He doesn't do a half-bad job.

She smiles her smile that is not really a smile at all, acknowledges his refusal to look intimidated with a tilt of her head. She could get out of here in a second, if she wanted to, despite the handcuffs tying her hands to the metal bed frame, despite the SHIELD agents guarding the door, and she knows that he knows it as well.

But if she is honest, she would rather not. Getting out of here would most likely mean killing Barton, the guy who was supposed to shoot her and chose not to, who is standing next to the window now with a frown on his face, fingers flexing against the compound bow hanging loosely at his side. It would mean killing the agent who is looking down at her with an expression that would fool anyone else into thinking that he's harmless when he's clearly not, the agent who pronounces her name carefully as if it matters, as if he hadn't given Barton the order to take her down half an hour ago.

"You should have killed me when you had the chance," she says in English, with a flawless British accent just to throw them off.

The agent's smile is not any more genuine than hers. "My agent thinks that you are worth talking to, and I tend to trust his judgment." He pauses. "Do you _want_ to talk, Rоспожа Рома́нова?"

And there it is again, the way he says her name, not quite accent-free but close to correct. She doesn't close her eyes, but she feels fatigue and tension digging painfully into the hollow between her shoulder blades, feels the itch of the sticky cotton panties she hasn't had a chance to change in days, feels the blood from an open blister pooling underneath the heel of her foot, and when she smiles this time, it is with something like relief.

"Let's talk," she says, and without hesitation, he pulls up a chair.

 

 

To be fair: Natasha has never actually killed anyone she has had sex with. That doesn't mean that everyone she's slept with is still alive, but that is a different story for another day.

Before she joined SHIELD, she mostly tried to keep work and pleasure apart. In her line of work, that meant a _love_ life was out of the question, and it reduced her _sex_ life to sporadic one-time-things with more or less innocent bystanders and a lot more quality time with her vibrator than she was necessarily comfortable with.

Still, as a general guideline it had worked quite well for her – meaning first and foremost: it had kept her alive – and joining the agency wasn't actually supposed to change anything. Except that she realized quickly that at SHIELD, the word "privacy" was used only ever in its negation, and "compartmentalizing" was something that the people down in the archives did when they filed reports.

 

 

"Wrap it up, guys," she hears Coulson's voice in her ear, and she lets go of the man she has just rendered unconscious with a swift side-kick to his neck.

Next to her, Hawkeye drops down from the flat roof he'd been perched on, making the jump look effortless in a way even she can admire, while three junior agents are hurrying out of cover to clean up their mess.

"You are injured," Barton says, pointing his bow at her left shoulder, and really, when she looks down, she can see blood seeping through a cut in her uniform top.

She shrugs, as much to deflect Barton's comment as it is to test her range of movement. With the adrenaline rush slowly receding, it is only just starting to hurt, but she knows that in half an hour, the pain is going to be a bitch.

"Coulson is going to fret," Barton says, in a voice that she would think sounded fond if it was anyone else.

She raises her brow. "I've had worse," she says, leading the way; but she has only just entered the tent they have set up shop in when she feels a hand on her arm.

It takes a conscious effort (and years of practice) to suppress her instincts and not give in to the urge to grab his wrist and twist it behind the man's back. To his credit, Coulson notices the sudden tension, because as suddenly as he got into her space, as quickly he's gone again, hands raised with his palms facing outwards to show his good intentions. He smiles, she relaxes, but the second she does he is on her again, fingers only stopping within a quarter-inch from her sleeve.

"You are hurt," he says, and it is almost funny how he makes it sound like a reproach – but then, maybe it is meant to be one. "Take off your shirt, let me see."

Over his shoulder, she can see Hawkeye smirking _I told you so_. It makes her want to slap Barton over the head, but it is also what makes her carefully set down her gun and start to strip, because it is obvious that he has been at the end of this treatment more than once.

Coulson reaches for her arm, turns it carefully against the light to inspect the cut on her shoulder. She bites down on the hiss that wants to escape, and his grip gentles minimally, but he doesn't let go.

"Barton," he says, and Clint is already approaching with a first aid kit, as if they play doctor and nurse all the time (and huh, that is an image she is not going to forget anytime soon.)

"Is this in your job description?" she asks, and Coulson looks up at her, brows raised.

"It's not a very deep cut," he says, "and I'm sure you are as impatient to leave Columbia behind as I am. So you have the choice: You can let me stitch you up – and by the way, I do have medical aid training – and go straight to bed when the plane hits the ground in New York, or I can take you to medical, and you can sit through hours of tests and awkward questions."

She coughs. "Be my guest."

He smirks and takes the hydrogen peroxide from the kit. "Of course, you are still going to check in with medical first thing tomorrow about a tetanus shot."

She clenches her teeth. "Of course."

"Now hold still," he says and starts cleaning the wound.

 

 

Despite what people seem to think, she has no romantic feelings for Clint Barton. More importantly, he is not interested in her either.

It is not a question of physical attraction – of course Clint is aesthetically pleasing, of course he thinks she is hot –, but if disguise and deceit are the most important elements of your work, if you are trained not to be distracted by superficialities, the obvious somehow becomes less appealing.

Really, in the end, it is a question of similarity: they are too much alike to even work well in bed, much less in a relationship. They are both too suspicious, too jaded, always expecting betrayal, and an affair between them would be an exhausting power play that would drain both of them too quickly to be at all rewarding.

She explains this to Coulson, when he asks her about it once, in his direct, no-bullshit way, during a long and boring stake-out in a corn field in Iowa. Of course he has already figured out that they are not sleeping together, but he doesn't seem to understand _why_.

If he was anyone else, she would tell him to go fuck himself and nothing more, but she figures she owes him that much, for making their friendship his business – not because he is curious, but because he is collecting all the data necessary in order to be able to keep them alive.

 

 

"I am starting to feel sorry for the punching bag," says the voice behind her, dry and amused, and she swirls around, fists still raised to her chin, as if to take another swing.

Coulson doesn't even flinch, just raises a brow and waits for her to calm down enough to lower the boxing gloves, before he hands her a water bottle. She pulls off the gloves to grab the bottle, drinks greedily, lets the water spill down her chin and onto her shirt.

"Tony Stark is such an asshole," she says finally, and Coulson actually laughs. It's a rare enough occurrence that it pulls her at least halfway out of the dark mood that had her beat the shit out of an innocent punching bag for the last two hours.

"I warned you," Coulson says, still smiling slightly.

"You told me that he's an obnoxious rich jerk, you didn't tell me that he has the most condescending way of flirting ever."

Coulson smirks and trades her empty water bottle for a fresh towel.

"Maybe that's because he has never actually flirted with me."

She drags the towel over her face gratefully. "I find that hard to believe, sir" she says. "The man clearly likes a challenge. By all means, he should have been all over you."

Coulson actually looks a bit surprised at that, but he covers it up quickly enough. "I'm not sure if that is supposed to be a compliment or an insult, agent."

He holds out his hand, but when she offers him the soaked towel, he reaches for her wrist instead, firmly enough to show his intent, and runs a thumb across her knuckles, which are red and a little swollen. He prods against a spot that might very well turn into a blister, and she focuses on not flinching when he presses down hard.

"Are you okay?" he asks. His voice is serious now, but still casual, as if he is only talking about her fingers, and it takes her a moment too long to pull her hand back.

She doesn't say: _I used to strangle innocent people with these hands for a living_ , or: _you gave me an out_ , and: _I feel bad for complaining about having to put up with a spoiled billionaire_ , because she knows Coulson is aware of all that already.

"Of course," she says lightly. "SHIELD pays me a lot of money for just having me babysit. I've had much worse jobs than that."

"Only the best for SHIELD," he says, the serious undertone gone from his voice, and walks away.

"Have someone take care of your hands, agent," he says over his shoulder, already in the doorway, "we may need you to actually beat up someone before the week is over."

"I'm looking forward to it," she shouts, loud enough to make sure that he can still hear it on his way out.

 

 

She does not remember missing her parents. She thinks that she must have, at some point, because they were there, and then they weren't, and it is what you do when people you care about suddenly disappear from your life, or so they say.

She does remember deciding not to care anymore. There was a man who was nice to her, in his way, and she thinks she must have mattered to him, somehow, if only because her cunt was tight and her breasts still growing, and he was the closest she had to a lover, a father, a friend at the time.

She watched him die, a bullet to the forehead, his eyes rolling back and then freezing, and she held her breath in her hiding place under the bed and escaped through the bathroom window as soon as the coast was clear. She didn't miss him.

Sometimes she hates Nick Fury for taking that from her when he set a stack of paperwork on the table in front of her and handed her a pen. She didn't know it yet when she signed her name on the bottom line, but joining SHIELD meant working with people who called her a friend, and she finds it harder and harder to resent them for the responsibility that comes with that title.

 

 

She comes back from a mission in Indonesia with a cold, three cracked ribs, and a hollow feeling in her stomach that is something different than hunger, although she did live off MREs and grilled insects for a week.

Hill tells her that Coulson and Barton are on assignment in New Mexico, and it shouldn't matter, it doesn't matter, except that she feels restless, and unhinged, and the next morning she spends ten minutes standing in Coulson's deserted office, waiting for him to show up for their debriefing session until she remembers that he's gone.

By the time their team gets back from New Mexico, still buzzing with excitement from their encounter with a Norwegian God, she is angry enough to avoid them, even when she hears that Coulson has been asking for her.

Instead, at 2:08am the same night, she breaks into his living quarters at HQ.

Coulson is sleeping on his back, one arm loosely spread out towards the gun on the night table, and she has pinned him to the narrow bed, hands on his wrists and knees on his thighs, by the time he comes to, still tired but alert and alarmed.

She waits just long enough for him to recognize her before she leans in to kiss him, a violent swipe of her tongue, an angry bite, sharp enough to leave a metallic taste in her mouth when she pulls back.

"Natasha," he says, and his voice is – indulgent, of all things, as if he knows that this is one of her more stupid ideas and is humoring her anyway, because she needs – she needs –

– and then she is on her back, and he is looking down on her, and she doesn't know how it happened but she must have let him because they both know that there is no way he could take her if she didn't want him to.

His kiss is more careful, but his fingers are steady when he pushes her leggins down and off, and then he sinks down between her thighs. She rests a hand on the back of his head while he's eating her out, to keep him in place as much as to ground herself, because it has been a long time since someone did this for her.

She is breathing hard by the time he pushes two spit-slicked fingers into her asshole and scissors her open, his tongue still busy against her heavy clit. She gets impatient, pushes him off, and gets on all fours. He fumbles for a condom in the night table drawer, and she fingers herself to an orgasm while he's fucking her ass, steadily, thoroughly, quietly. She can feel him shake only a little when he comes himself, mouth open against her shoulder blade.

The moment she starts squirming, he moves away to give her space, and she slips out and heads for the bathroom. She turns the water in the shower as hot as she can stand, uses too much soap, and washes it all away, the stickiness between her legs, the sweat, the misery.

For the first time in weeks, she feels clean again.

Coulson is clearly surprised when she slips back into his bed, but he is silent, just moves to give her space when she stretches out at his side, turning her back to him so that she can keep an eye on the door.

She still leaves early the next morning, before he wakes.

 

 

The words _happiness_ and _love_ have no meaning for her. It is not like she doesn't understand the concept, but like all abstract ideas that don't relate to anything _real_ , they are irrelevant for her.

She prefers to rely on things that she knows exist: _satisfaction, safety, trust_. Not that any place ever makes her feel completely safe. Not that any person has her unconditional trust. But they are aims that she can realistically try to obtain, to a certain degree.

She thinks that one of the reasons she fits in with SHIELD so well is that when it comes down to it, most of the agents share her perspective. It's hard not to, with all the things they see, with everything they have to do.

When she figures out that Coulson, of all people, is an idealist, she is honestly surprised. He is the one who sends junior agents out into the field, who gives them orders that can make the difference between life and death, and when the balance tilts towards death, he is the one who listens to them die.

But she has seen his Captain America merchandise, she has heard the sincerity in his voice when he tells the new agents what it is they are supposed to risk their lives _for_ , and she remembers the careful friendliness he offered her when everyone else at SHIELD was still looking at her with resentment and distrust.

 _I don't know how you do it_ , she tells him, on one of those days, when they are on a helicopter back to base, and there is blood everywhere, on her hands, on his, from where they kept trying, with sheer force, to hold back the guts that kept spilling out of a too-young agent's stomach.

He shrugs and drags a tired hand across his face. Now there is blood on his forehead, his nose, but she is going to wait for someone else to tell him.

 _I don't know how not to_ , is his reply. Somehow, it makes more sense than it should.

 

 

"You are in a good mood today," she complains, when Coulson smiles at her for no good reason as she climbs in the car with him. She is tired and hungry and there is mud in her boots, and it makes her feel grumpy and irritated.

He raises his brows, but doesn't comment, just hands her a coffee cup and something wrapped in aluminum foil that might be a bagel.

"Cheeseburger," he says, before she can ask, and she feels an irrational surge of affection as she hastily tears the foil apart.

She doesn't look up again until the burger and most of the coffee are gone. Only then does she spare another glance for Coulson, who is patiently sitting in the driver's seat, watching her with that little smile still playing around the corners of his mouth.

"Seriously, sir," she says. "What's with you today?"

"They found Captain America," he says, and yes, that is kind of relevant news.

"His body, you mean," she says, and he shakes his head, then nods.

"No, no," he says. "He's alive. They just have to find a way to …. defrost him."

"Defrost him," she repeats, and he nods with something akin to eagerness. She would point out that there is a slight difference between being an ice cube and being alive, and that honestly, she doesn't care much either way: Captain America had his chance, and the world is still a shit hole, as far as she is concerned.

But Coulson is smiling, and he brought her a burger, and the good kind of coffee, and she knows he is going to debrief her in the car on the way home so that she can walk away and get some sleep the moment they get back.

So instead she quickly checks the rear-view mirrors (but the road still stretches out for miles in the Texan heat without any cars in sight) and reaches across the gear stick with one hand to cup his groin, watches his smile shift into confused surprise even as she can feel him harden in her grip. For a split second she thinks he is going to refuse, but then he just reaches down to recline his seat and give her more room to work.

For several reasons, none of them pleasant, she tends to not give blow jobs very often. That doesn't mean she isn't good at it, though, and Coulson is quietly appreciative, exhaling harshly as he tries to keep from bucking up into her mouth when she takes him in deep. She fondles his balls with one hand, feels them swell under her fingers and then tighten, and when he comes with a strangled groan, she is already expecting the hot bitterness of his come on her tongue.

It should not be quite that satisfying to swallow, beyond the rational explanations of _I have had worse things in my mouth_ , and _It's far less messy like this_ , but she likes that she can taste that he has been secretly smoking again, likes the bitten-off gasp that tells her that she managed to take him by surprise.

She licks around the head of his softening cock, then gently tucks him back into his pants, and allows him to brush his fingers over the curve of her neck once before she sits back up.

"Thank you for the food," she says and gets comfortable, putting her feet up on the dashboard.

He smirks and takes a sip from his own coffee cup. "You are welcome," he says and starts the car.

 

 

The idea of the Avengers Initiative does not appeal to her any more than it does to Barton. They have worked with teams, but they are not team players: they both feel safer, and more comfortable in their skin, when it is just them, their weapon of choice, and the voice of their handler in their ear.

The idea of being part of a regular team is unpleasant enough, and they both know enough to realize that working with the Avengers would be something else entirely. Clint has met Thor (meaning: has had him in his crosshairs) and says he is deeply unsettling, and insane; and she has met Stark (meaning: stalked him by pretending to work for him) and knows that he is incredibly obnoxious, and also insane.

So they both breathe a sigh of relief when it turns out that Tony Stark is not any more interested in joining the Avengers than they are. That they don't say anything else has mostly to do with the fact that – despite their reputation – they are professional agents and know when not to question their superiors' decisions. That Coulson is clearly excited about the whole thing is another reason for keeping their opinions to themselves, because neither of them feels particularly like crushing his hopes.

It is easy as long as they feel safe in the knowledge that the Avengers are never going to happen anyway.

When they do, it is the day the world almost ends, and complaints about Tony Stark are the furthest thing on her mind.

 

 

"Fuck, Coulson, прокля́тие!" she curses, hand clenched tightly around the innocent piece of fabric.

The tie was under her bed on the helicarrier, and she reached for it distractedly when she saw something blue in the corner of her eye, almost dropping it when she realized what it was.

It must have been here for weeks, the night before she left for Russia, most likely, when she lured Coulson into her quarters under a flimsy pretense because she was itching for a good fuck.

He'd obliged her, like usual, and when she closes her eyes, she can almost smell his after-shave, feel his fingers in her. It seems like a lifetime ago.

It seems impossible to imagine that it is something she is never going to have again.

"You okay?" someone asks from the doorway, and of course of all people to come and check on her, it has to be Tony Stark. He looks somber, none of the self-protective arrogance she is used to, and she can see his eyes flicker to the tie in her hands and back up to her face.

"I didn't know you played cello," he says, and she is too tired to even pretend that she doesn't know what he is talking about.

"It wasn't like that," she says. "It was just a thing." She swallows around the bile rising in her throat. "Why are you here?" she asks. "I didn't think you'd want to come back here any sooner than you had to."

He narrows his eyes at her, as if he is looking for something, then he nods firmly, more to himself.

"I had JARVIS going through the surveillance footage of the attack," he says, and despite his casual tone, there is a tension in his voice that makes her stand straighter at once.

"I found some interesting … information, that I think you might be interested in."

She is completely alert now, conscious of the concealed gun against her side. She is trying to read his face, but his eyes are not on hers anymore.

They are trained on the tie again, balled up and wrinkled in her fist. She feels her heart beating faster, and she tells herself that what she feels is not hope.


End file.
